Setting MAMEWAH as Shell

[absvicandmark]

Hi, ive decided to use mamewah for my cab. The roms and screenshots are all setup nicely and work well. However, I was hoping to stop explorer booting up and just mamewah and then if I exit mamewah then it will load explorer.exe . I read somewhere of a tutorial so im pretty confident. However, is there a way to get back into explorer if I do something wrong and mamewah doesnt load? I didnt want to do this just yet incase I mess it up (It took over 2 hours to load all my roms!). Im using mame087 with complete rom set for this and latest mamewah with Windows ME.
Also is there somewhere on here that explains how to hide Win ME? I found the XP thread but this is specific to XP.

[knohbody]

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Mamewah_FAQ

Near the bottom, it has a section on setting up Mamewah as your shell. It also shows how you can set up Explorer to run when Mamewah is exited.

AFAIK, setting up Mamewah as your shell will hide Win ME, but I may be wrong about that.

Hope this helps.

-Knohbody

[DaveMMR]

I think the best way to hide WindowsME is to take it to the desert, dig a hole and bury it as deep as you can.      

[DaemonCollector]

That Wiki page dosn't really help him as its specific to NT operating systems whereas ME is the last 9x operating system they made. Its actually very easy to set it as your shell in ME. Go to Start, Run. and type in "notepad C:\windows\system.ini". when it opens you'll see a line called [boot] slightly under that you'll find a line that says "shell = explorer.exe" or something to that effect, replace explorer.exe with the path to your MameWAH executable. Reboot. And enjoy.

[gamecreature]

That Wiki page dosn't really help him as its specific to NT operating systems whereas ME is the last 9x operating system they made. Its actually very easy to set it as your shell in ME. Go to Start, Run. and type in "notepad C:\windows\system.ini". when it opens you'll see a line called [boot] slightly under that you'll find a line that says "shell = explorer.exe" or something to that effect, replace explorer.exe with the path to your MameWAH executable. Reboot. And enjoy.

Oddly enough that didn't work for me. I was using MaLa as my frontend, but I don't see how that would make a difference. What happened was that it displayed an error and said I'd have to re-install windows to fix it. Fortunately, the machine was on a network and I was able to get back in there and re-edit the sys.ini file. Currently, I put MaLa in my Startup folder, which accomplishes the task. I'll need to do a little hiding with the logo screens, etc. but it gets the job done.

[DaemonCollector]

What version of windows? I know for a fact that works in 98 and 98se. I have never personally tried it on ME. There may be something different about ME as it was a slightly odd structure...I'll look into it.


EDIT: did some looking and it is the same in ME...GameCreature, wanna do a test for me? try changing your shell line to "shell=notepad.exe" and see if it starts notepad up.

[gamecreature]

What version of windows? I know for a fact that works in 98 and 98se. I have never personally tried it on ME. There may be something different about ME as it was a slightly odd structure...I'll look into it.


EDIT: did some looking and it is the same in ME...GameCreature, wanna do a test for me? try changing your shell line to "shell=notepad.exe" and see if it starts notepad up.

Yep, turns out that there's a handful of files that MaLa expects to find when starting up. Since I didn't find an option for setting a path or directory, I had to copy those files into Windows. It all works now, though Shutdown.exe doesn't shut windows off like it's supposed to

[DaemonCollector]

"RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 1" use that command to shutdown windows for Windows 95-ME

[knohbody]

Sorry, it seems that my memory is failing me, I recalled replacing the shell in Windows ME was much the same as WinNT/2000/XP, but it seems I was horribly horribly wrong. Please forgive me.

-Knohbody

[loadman]

Yep, turns out that there's a handful of files that MaLa expects to find when starting up. Since I didn't find an option for setting a path or directory, I had to copy those files into Windows. It all works now, though Shutdown.exe doesn't shut windows off like it's supposed to

... I use XP and all is good.

Idea?
The latest version of MaLa has the option of launching apps on Mala shutdown.  If you find a .exe on the net that will shutdown ME maybe you could use that?

[gamecreature]

The weird thing is when I choose shutdown from the menu, it works fine. It's only when I use "esc" to quit that it can't seem to shutdown. Very strange.

[swindus]

The weird thing is when I choose shutdown from the menu, it works fine. It's only when I use "esc" to quit that it can't seem to shutdown. Very strange.

Did you change the exit action on the GUI- > Exit tab to 'Shutdown'?
The menu and the exit window use the same code to shutdown ...

[gamecreature]

Did you change the exit action on the GUI- > Exit tab to 'Shutdown'?
The menu and the exit window use the same code to shutdown ...

Yes I did. Very mysterious. I'm not sure why they're behaving differently, but this isn't the first time ME has been inconsistant.

[gamecreature]

I unchecked the "shutdown" box and selected it from the pulldown menu instead (changing "quit" to "shutdown") Now it works perfectly. Thanks!

[swindus]

The default shutdown method is a winapi function (WinExit) and should work on all windows operating systems. The "shutdown" box is just an alternative method to shutdown the computer with shutdown.exe if the api call doesn't work ....

Nice to hear that it works now!

[loadman]

The default shutdown method is a winapi function (WinExit) and should work on all windows operating systems. The "shutdown" box is just an alternative method to shutdown the computer with shutdown.exe if the api call doesn't work ....

..Maybe you could change it to have both shutdown options on the pulldown menu to reduce confusion?